【Native Speaker每日综合训练—34系列】【34-14】经管 - ChaseDream

Flipping the organization
BY James M. Kerr | April 2, 2014

[Time2]
It is the people of the enterprise that ultimately determine its long-term success or failure. Specifically, it is the front-line personnel, the troops in the trench that ultimately define the "customer experience" of an organization's stakeholders.

They produce the products that are consumed. They deliver the services that are expected by discerning customers. They execute the key processes and use the automated tools that get work done. They are the organization's most important asset.

Interestingly, this runs counter to how most senior leadership teams see it. They operate from a very different perspective – one where they sit at the top of the pyramid. Within this paradigm, their needs come first, followed by the middle management layer. The front-line staff is at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole.

Sure, much has been written about the importance of the customer-facing functions. Most management teams even talk about how their front-line personnel are crucial to the growth and profitability of the business. But little has been done to recast the current top-of-the-pyramid mindset and flip the pyramid on its ear so to provide emphasis on the front-line staff that does the work of the organization. Why is that?
[196 words]

[Time 3]
The Paradox in Rethinking the Pyramid
An interesting paradox exists that complicates matters when it comes to flipping the pyramid. You see, we're asking those who are at the top to place themselves at the bottom of the ladder.

Executive teams have a vested interest in the prolongation of the current mindset. They don't want to miss out on the perks, lower their salaries, live without the luxuries that have become part and parcel to executive life. This paradox is perhaps the greatest challenge to overcome in changing the way business is organized and operates.

Typically, paradigm shifts like the one suggested here come from the outside of the status quo. Recall struggles related to women's rights and racial equality for examples of societal paradigm shifts that were successfully driven from outsiders and redefined the way things work in the United States.

So, why even bother proposing such radical thinking? As a management consultant, I am the epitome of an "outsider". I have nothing to gain politically or financially by making the suggestion. But, I do have the challenge of developing a compelling business case for such change.

Simply put, today's business environment is anything but typical. The U.S. has still not recovered from its financial shambles, huge swathes of industry have vanished taking hundreds of thousands of jobs with them and it is still quite possible that if a shift in thinking doesn't take place then the very survival of many other enterprises will be at stake.

So it is in today's leadership team's respective best interests to figure out how to stop the death spiral – or there will be outsiders called upon to make the transition for them.

It seems the time is right to become a bit radical.
[291 words]

[Time 4]
Making It Happen
There are implications to turning the corner on executive thinking. Firstly, an upside-down view of the organization must be adopted, where customers are at the top, those who work with customers are next and those who work to support those who work with customers are at subsequent rungs. This type of change will drive business decisions from a new perspective and everyone in the organization will be affected by it. True empowerment is enabled and those closest to the customer are allowed to "call the shots" on how the customer is treated.

In order to make this happen, we must sharpen our perspectives on the players that inhabit the basic layers of the organization. We must recognize that each layer have unique perspectives and are responsible for specific essential actions.

The executive layer, for example, is looking out five years. They are to determine where the organization is heading. The senior leadership team is responsible for establishing and articulating a compelling vision and then working hard to engage their staff members in the pursuit of it.

While the senior executives are envisioning what the enterprise can become over the next several years, the mid-level managers are concerned about operational excellence. They use the current year as a timeframe. The middle managers are overseeing and auditing work being done this year.

Certainly they need to understand the vision so to translate it for their respective staff members. But, in the end, they must empower their associates to do what is necessary to achieve the vision, while managing this year's budget.

[262 words]

[Time 5]
Staff members, on the other hand, are ultimately responsible for execution. Part of their responsibility is to be constantly looking for ways to improve what they do. They must develop new skills and fine-tune existing ones so to be ever prepared to do what it takes to get the job done. Optimizing performance today is the driver for this layer of the organization. After all, it is their work that ultimately delivers value to the customer.

Once we gain the necessary understanding and perspective, senior leaders can shift their attention to the work needed to promote the cultural change that flipping the pyramid represents. It is essential that executives become the ambassadors of change that is essential to this shift. By doing so, they will begin to engage in the service of the staff that is ultimately responsible for delivering desired results.

Think of the powerhouses that could be established if the millions of dollars allocated to executive bonuses were instead redirected to staff training, development and workplace / technology enhancements. Talk about a stimulus package!

Of course, awareness programs must be put into place to help educate staff regarding this shift in prerogative and to inform them of what is expected in the new work environment. It certainly takes more than talk. Actions must follow the message and new development programs must be introduced immediately to demonstrate appropriate commitment to flipping the pyramid.

Finally, new ways of measuring and rewarding employee performance is required, too. By tying compensation to behavior modification we motivate personnel to commit to self-improvement. Indeed, this is how organizations will transition and, ultimately, achieve peak performance.
[271 words]

[Time 6]
To Sum
Change will not be easy. Indeed, executive compensation continues to be greater, their perks are plentiful, their private offices are well appointed and their support staffs are very attentive. What did the management team at several Wall Street firms do months after the U.S. government provided millions in bail-out money? They awarded themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses!

One can argue that bonuses are part of the executive compensation package prevalent on Wall Street. But, aren't bonuses awarded on merit? Did any of Wall Street's executive's performance warrant a bonus after how their greed so strongly contributed to the near-collapse of the world economy?

Such behavior is the epitome of the prevailing executive mindset. "I exist therefore I deserve." Nothing is more ridiculous, and, as recent headlines suggest, nothing is more dangerous to the long-term success of an organization.

Perhaps, now more than ever before, the prevailing mindset must be changed. Indeed, businesses must begin to flip the pyramid upside down and focus attention on, and, pour precious resources into the nurturing and development of the staff that ultimately deliver products and services to the customer – not on the executives whom primarily manage the spin among the institutional investment community.

If the game doesn't change, many more U.S. business institutions are likely to flail and falter. It is time to flip the pyramid.
[227 words]

Source: Management Issue

Doing stuff, not making stuff
By S. C. | January 20, 2014

[Paraphrase 7]
NOT everyone treats China's official statistics with casual disdain. Last month the head of China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) paid a visit to Mr Ye, an elderly man in Jiangsu province, who has kept a meticulous daily record of his household's income and spending for the past 47 years. His cache of ledger books note every accrual (from wages to birthday gifts) and every outlay (some worth tens of thousands of yuan, others worth pennies) in painstaking detail, providing a microscopic view of China's macroeconomic transformation. Mr Ye has now donated his ledgers-of-love to the NBS—so we know that at least some of their records are accurate.

The diligent Mr Ye earned a mention in today's NBS press conference, which reviewed China's economic progress in 2013. He exemplifies the kind of conscientious, ground-level reporting on which the NBS relies for its overarching figures. Those aggregate numbers revealed that China's economy grew by 7.7% in 2013, the same pace as 2012 and a little above the government's lower limit of 7.5%.

The economy's growth was, however, substantially slower than the expansion of credit, adding to worries about financial fragility and potential defaults. And GDP grew as fast as it did only because the government once again allowed investment to revive flagging demand, despite its longstanding desire to move away from a pattern of debt-financed, investment-led growth. Capital spending on buildings, factories, infrastructure and other physical assets made the biggest contribution to China's growth (54%), outweighing consumer spending of the sort recorded so carefully by Mr Ye.* This investment-heavy expansion arrested a tentative trend towards consumption-led growth that began in 2011.

Those looking for a "rebalanced" Chinese economy had to look elsewhere: not in China's pattern of spending, but in its pattern of production and income. For the first time since 1961, China's production of services (which include transport, wholesaling, retailing, hotels, finance, real estate and scientific research, among other things) exceeded its industrial output (see chart). The new figures meant that China's economy is now primarily based on doing things for people not making things for them. For a country renowned for its industrial clout, this marked a long-awaited turning point.

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The income earned from all this production was also distributed a little differently in 2013. The country's official Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality that ranges from zero (when income is evenly distributed) to 1 (when one person takes all), fell ever so slightly to 0.473, continuing a five-year trend of narrowing inequality.

This trend in the official figures is not believed by many Chinese citizens, who are frequently disgusted by the conspicuous consumption of China's wealthy elites. Sceptics suspect that the official bean-counters miss a lot of the shady income that passes through the hands of the flashy rich. Not every household, after all, records their income as scrupulously as Mr Ye does.

But the narrowing of inequality may nonetheless capture something real. China's statistical shortcomings, insofar as they exist, should distort the level of the Gini coefficient more than its trend. And it's also possible that China's resentful citizenry are so preoccupied with rising inequaility within China's metropolises that they ignore the narrowing inequality between its cities and the countryside. In 2009 the disposable income of the average Chinese urbanite was 3.33 times the net income of a rural resident. That ratio has now fallen to 3.03, according to today's NBS figures.

The migrants who cross from the countryside to the city are also enjoying healthy gains in wages. Their monthly incomes increased by 13.9% in nominal terms in 2013. These pay hikes may reflect the increase in their bargaining power as China's workforce begins to thin out. The country's population of working age (aged 16-59) fell by 2.44 million in 2013, according to the NBS. Its head noted that many firms report labour costs rising by 10-15%.

The ageing of China's population causes almost as much concern as the maturing of its debt. But it is important to keep things in perspective. The fact that urban employment increased by almost 11.4m in 2013 suggests that China's hinterland is not quite empty yet. There are still people ready to move to city jobs if the terms are sufficiently compelling. There is also a potential supply of workers among the people aged 60 and over who do not yet consider themselves to be above working age, whatever the statisticians say. The diligent Mr Ye, for example, is 80 years old.
[748 words]

Source: Economists
http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/01/chinas-economy